


Absolute Bearing

by AshesofOrisoun



Category: The Last Ship (TV)
Genre: A what if challenge, Angst, F/M, Romance, Turned into a series, lots of short fics, short fic, suggestion of sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-04-14 01:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4545579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshesofOrisoun/pseuds/AshesofOrisoun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is brutal and beautiful in her way, like the sea ravaging stone cliffs, or a storm that churns waves in the deep waters they sail on. She refuses to yield, refuses to accept the word “impossible”, and that more than anything brought him into the maelstrom she created on his ship. [is now a collection of unconnected one-shots]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Absolute Bearing

He doesn’t remember what prompted it, what propelled him from passive attraction to acting on emotion he didn’t think himself capable of anymore. They had pushed and pulled one another for months, and he had put off thinking about any of it for just as long. He had been married, after all, and highly devoted, even after his wife - God he still misses her - had passed away. 

 _Passed away_. It sounds so benign, like she simply gave in one day and ceased to live. It doesn’t describe the pain she must have felt, the desperation, the  _fear_. That thought more than any other still eats at him, still drives a wedge between him and the mission he doggedly pursues.

And then there is  _her_ , a woman so devoted to her own mission that she would go days without sleep, forget to eat, and sit quietly in dark corners when she thought no one was looking, crying for the failures and successes alike.

This is the woman he finds himself  _drowning_ in.

She is brutal and beautiful in her way, like the sea ravaging stone cliffs, or a storm that churns waves in the deep waters they sail on. She refuses to yield, refuses to accept the word “impossible”, and that more than anything brought him into the maelstrom she created on his ship.

He had watched those cunning eyes of hers for signs of whatever emotion she would be throwing his way, but it wasn’t until recently he wanted to see them closed in pleasure as his rough hands trailed her skin. He had rarely noticed her mouth, not really, except to gauge if her words were tinted in sarcasm; he has found more and more he wants to taste words of rapture as they are gasped from those lips. Her body had seemed small to him, capable and strong but never showing any of the smooth curves that had so attracted him to his wife.

He discovered recently that her thin frame brought out a desire set somewhere deep in his bones.

Somehow this back and forth they had played for longer than he cared to admit - guilt gnaws at him for his mental infidelity to his wife - has now reached a breaking point, unable to continue the subtle game between them. He doesn’t recall the exact moment it happened, but something snapped like a tow rope unable to handle the unbearable tension between two ships, and abruptly those lips and that skin and her  _body_  was bare to him, just as volatile as the waters surrounding him.

Her touch scorches him, and he feels as though he understands the fever The Six underwent. The logic, the cool calm he prides himself in is gone in a delirium of flesh and half-spoken words, replaced by something far less inclined to think rationally. There isn’t a perfect molding of their bodies, but rather a sort of seductive dissonance that leaves his hands unable to linger on one portion of her skin, and his lips to remain steady on her own.

Still, that guilt remains, but for now he can lose himself in this fragile, unbreakable thing, this woman who challenges his will and confronts his stubbornness.

She is  _drowning_ him, but he is willingly drinking her in.   


	2. Range Clock

She’d always imagined sailors to be smaller, wiry and ribald men, built to live on ships where space was at a premium and concepts such as “suites” stopped at a bunk bed and lone locker. These notions were never challenged, as she had always worked with the respective Air Forces of whatever government she could latch on to for her research, and those men were a different breed entirely.

But then she watched that man walk into her appropriated helo bay, and all her preconceptions about sailors and their supposed type were a thing of the past.

He first struck her as simply broad, but the more she studied him - and to her credit, she thinks he has yet to notice - the more she realized he wasn’t just a large man; he is a tall and well built individual, but it is his manner that sets him apart. 

True, his frame is expansive, and carries no small amount of useful, well-earned muscle, but it isn’t just that he physically takes up more room than most other men on the ship. In fact, she is certain that there are taller, and larger men currently residing on the Nathan James, but none of them can order attention or take up space the way he can. Again, it is his manner, that occasionally infuriating way about him that generates an air of command that is hard - ever so hard - to ignore. 

When he walks, he portrays a predator, easy in his home environment but readily deadly given the chance. When he sits, his presence is not diminished, simply subdued. And when he brings to bear that anger, that righteous indignation, he fills his space with an infectious, chilling rage that seems to pull strength straight from the steel and steam and sailors below his feet. 

And yet. 

He is kind. He is a man whose smile is contagious and whose laugh - rare as it is - never ceases to lighten her heart, if only for a moment. This man who has lost so much and fought so tirelessly, he cares so very much for his crew, for his family - blood and not - and that above all things makes him formidable. 

She sees the love in him, and the pain, and knows this great man is all the more great because of it. 

So sure, she had always thought of sailors as quick men, small men, men who fit compact in the cramped spaces designated for them. She thought them most likely coarse and bawdy, and unlikely to have more than a little in common with herself. 

Then this man stepped in from a sunlit deck and into her shambles lab, and she knew she had been sorely mistaken. 

He is the ship beneath him, the men behind him, and the power of his title. 

He is no small man. 

And she thinks she could love him.


	3. Wake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Tom realizes his feelings after Rachel is taken hostage".

There is something cold and twisted in his gut, upending his center and growing ever sharper. It bathes him in ice, sets a tremble into his hands that he can't will away, and cuts short his breath with every short breath of air he sucks down. This cold thing is working its way into his brain, digging deep to that part of him he keeps locked away.

It isn't good for a captain to be so unsure, so incapable of fighting down the spiked cold as it grows roots in his stomach. He needs to be strong and firm, to stand tall and ready as the situation demands, but his mind and body are rebelling against that idea.

He is in her lab, shaking fingers tracing small artifacts of her time here: empty vials, a worn microscope, neat rows of syringes. And suddenly comes the realization that these things, these items tiny and large, mean nothing without her using them. They are simply things, inanimate objects existing for the prospect of future use, and even then, they come alive only from skilled touch.

Her hands gave these things life, and without her, they are only things.

That jagged cold in his middle twists again, and he grinds his teeth in retaliation. Soon, there will be contact from his people on the ground. Soon there will be word as to whether or not she skated through another bloody, tangled situation, unharmed but wary.

Soon there will be word if these things around him would still have use.

Abruptly, his assaulted mind latches on to a singular thought: she gave him a use past captain and soldier, brought him literal salvation through her tears and her fears and her triumphs, and never once did he recognize the way his heart had responded to such heady acts.

And there it was, the thought that cracks the hold of the cold thing around his chest, the bands that prevented him from breathing. He gasps in great lungfuls of chill air, his tremoring hands scrubbing away at the hard layer of fear on his face. There is still terror, still an abundance of anxiety and worry and panic, but now he knows why.

It isn't just because she is the phenomenal Dr. Scott, or because she has brought them all new life, or because of the thousand and one other things she has given to this overwhelming, never-ending quest they are all set on. It isn't because she is one of them, a member of their floating family, and it isn't because she spurs them all on to greater things.

It is because she is Rachel.

And he loves her.

This simple understanding brings a sudden peace with it, a warmth that combats the cold inside him. There remains the worry and panic, but he understands why now, understands the reason behind the emotions, and that is enough to rip up the roots of cold that had burrowed tight into his mind. He can think again, he can reason, and with that reason comes a flood of potential plans. He has faith in her, in the strength and tenacity of her mind, and in her conviction; his worry is now getting her back, not if she is still alive.

Her hands give so much life, to her machines and computers, to family and strangers.

He needs her to know what those hands have done to his heart.


	4. Founder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick reminder, that these are not in any sort of order, and most of them come from prompts or small ideas from others.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

They weren't supposed to be so feverish. They weren't supposed to show the middle stage signs of the virus. They were supposed to be better.

But like all things in the world, what is supposed to happen, and what will happen are two highly different things.

She watches them languish, and all she can think is that her greatest achievement thus far would end in total failure, costing the lives of six more souls, six more brave and honest and good people.

Her failure is going to kill him.

She had protested his involvement - hell, they all had - but in the end he had fallen back to that stubborn, self-sacrificing nature of his and bulled his way into the trial. She'd nearly begged him to rethink his choice, to remember that he was the captain, that he had more responsibilities to his crew than to humanity at large, and he was needed more than any other man or woman on the ship.

That went about as well as one would expect.

So now she watches behind a panel of plastic, surrounded by a pressurized suit, as his stern, kind face is coated with sweat, and his lips move with words she cannot comprehend; he is in delirium and it breaks a part of her she didn't know existed. This man...he is strength personified, he is unwavering and passionate, a fixed point they all revolve around, yet here he is, suffering for her hubris, suffering for her crazed need to be right about something that could save millions.

He is suffering because she was wrong.

They are all of them - The Six as he calls them - in pain, but his torment twists something deep within her, something she was sure couldn't exist, not because she is a cold woman but because she simply didn't have time or room in her life for such an emotion. Every time his lips move to speak words she doesn't want to understand, every time his fingers ghost over her arm when she changes his meds, every time his eyes close and for a second they are all certain he has finally succumbed; these sharp, bladed moments rip into her, bringing on an agony she is fighting, but losing to.

If he dies, he will take with him the part of her that drives her doggedly to the cure.

If he dies, it will kill her.

She realizes that too late, realizes her mistake in quantifying her emotion as simply respect. She has put a man - a great man, an extraordinary man, a beautiful man - in a sealed room with a virus designed for one thing, and it is certainly doing its job. She is killing him for her pride, and she feels the weight of it in her shredded chest, not just because he is the captain, but because he is the one her heart is bleeding raw for.

She doesn't know if it is love, but it pounds a white hot nail ever deeper in her chest, in her mind, in her soul with every ragged breath he takes.

He is dying for the highest cause.

She is dying from his sacrifice.

And she knows it is all her fault.

**Author's Note:**

> No chapter in the following work will relate to any other chapter, aside from one or two that needed resolution in more than one "chapter".


End file.
